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The Rational Response Squad is a group of atheist activists who impact society by changing the way we view god belief. This site is a haven for those who are pushing back against the norm, and a place for believers of gods to have their beliefs exposed as false should they want to try their hand at confronting us.

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Harold Camping

I was not sure where else to post this. News sounded like a good place.

The RRS home page has this statement following a large post on Harold Camping:

"I certainly would like a Christian to explain this to me, without just some hand-waving and trying to dismiss Camping as a fringe crackpot: How is it that your apparently lovely, morally pure religion is such a vector for this sort of disease? How is it that people like Mr. Camping, and organizations like Family Radio, can become multi-million dollar entities by having a Bible ride shotgun with their disgusting messages? Do you not see this as a fundamental problem with vague superstitions? "

So you would like Christians to, instead of denounce Camping as the crick-pot he is, to accept blame for his delusions.You would like me hold him up as a good Christian leader so that you can blame the Bible and God for the actions of a delusional man who ignored what the Bible has to say.Camping ignored what the Bible taught in order to gain himself money and glory.He no more had the Bible “riding shotgun” than I would have the “Origin of Species” riding shotgun if I started a company to use words and phrases from it to show that Darwin truly believed in God. Yes I do see that vague superstitions have fundamental problems, that's why I don't agree with science's rendition of how we all got here. I would love to setup a one-one debate with you to discuss all of this further. I think we could have a fun, cordial, intelligent debate about many things discussed on this site. I look forward to it.

I doo understand that you may not have been the one to post that particular quote on the home page. I guess I should have directed my first comments to RRS and not to you. But I was addressing you about the one-one debate.

While you, a self identified christian(?), and a majority of others do denounce people like Camping, you never actually addressed the question. The poster wasn't suggesting you embrace Camping, just explain how someone can read the bible and come to such conclusions as he did if the bible is the perfect word of god.

While you, a self identified christian(?), and a majority of others do denounce people like Camping, you never actually addressed the question. The poster wasn't suggesting you embrace Camping, just explain how someone can read the bible and come to such conclusions as he did if the bible is the perfect word of god. Do you think Camping believes himself to be christian?

The answer to that question is that you can't come to Camping's conclusion unless you ignore what the Bible actually says. The original post wanted me to explain this, but wanted to limit me from using the one explanation that was true. If you actually read the Bible, and not just try to use it a source of secret numbers for calculations, then you don't get Camping's conclusions.

As for your last question, I do not know. I cannot believe that someone truly follows Jesus, if they ignore what he said in order to make there own rules. And it is not just a "few verses". Camping's doctrines are way outside of Christianity.

The answer to that question is that you can't come to Camping's conclusion unless you ignore what the Bible actually says. The original post wanted me to explain this, but wanted to limit me from using the one explanation that was true. If you actually read the Bible, and not just try to use it a source of secret numbers for calculations, then you don't get Camping's conclusions.

But there are so many Christian denominations and cults, so we should conclude the bible is not clear in any way and open to interpretation. Mr. Camping tried to answer his critics with the bible. What make your interpretation better than his?

joe_2007 wrote:

As for your last question, I do not know. I cannot believe that someone truly follows Jesus, if they ignore what he said in order to make there own rules. And it is not just a "few verses". Camping's doctrines are way outside of Christianity.

Jesus commanded turn the other check and give to all who ask. Do you do this? No, so you're making up your own rules. You follow your own morality and then interpret the bible to fit this. This is what all religious people do. Your god is really your own convenience.

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” Seneca

Hi, Joe -- perhaps you could address the topic from a slightly differen perspective. On a popular CNN forum, I've been reading some atheist and Christian reactions to the failure of Mr. Camping's prediction. The Christian responses have uniformly cited Camping's ignorance of Biblical teaching about the end of time -- that his mistake in all this was the arrogance to calculate a date for something the Bible says will come "as a theif in the night," at a time nobody can predict.

Ridicule from Christians has focused on Camping's audacity in trying to predict a date for Biblical prophecy. I would submit, however, that in doing so the Christians are in fact mocking the prophecies themselves, right along with all the rest of us. It's not the naming of a date that everyone, including Christians, realizes is an expression of madness, it is exposing to the light of day those events that are supposed to take place on that date -- whether it occurs now or sometime in the future.

Mainstream Christianity makes the same predictions as Harold Camping -- only mainstream Christianity defers this dire apocalypse into the fog of an abstract future, a mist so thick as to be indistiguisable from fantasy. You believe in it, becuase it is pushed so deeply into your imagination that you don't really expect to have to deal with it actually happening. When confronted with the reality of such an occurance in the real present, by virtue of a literalist such as Camping, you Christians are able to see its absurdity -- the bubble of your daydream is burst and your impulse is to restore it by denigrating Camping only for naming a date. But it is not the date that is crazy. What Christian doctrine has built its empire around, is an insane prediction that is identical to Camping's. You might consider this recent event a rehearsal for what your reaction to the real event would be. For first of all, the time of your fantasy end will never come, the fog protecting it will never lift -- but if it did, your reaction would be to resist it just as you did on May 21. Because it's not the date that is wrong with this vision -- it is that the vision is utter whimsy, and for anyone who is not as crazy as Camping, like you for example, reality always prevails in the real world.

Consider this: 70% of your memory is pure imagination. The same goes for everyone on the planet, with the odd ocassional difference up or down since not everyone is exactly the same. But 70% is the average. What happens is that you remember specific scenes, sounds, touches, or smells. The rest is imagined. Your brain automatically filling in the blanks while you are thinking about that particular memory. Oftentimes it does so fairly accurately, but it's still imagination, not actual memory.

You would have to read the bible cover to cover a thousand times (a pure guess, it'd probably take a lot more than that) in order to truly memorize it. And you'll have to be great with Latin, since you can't trust translated copies (fortunately language is stored differently than memory in the brain, so you don't need to worry about the same ratio. Learn Latin fluently, and it's yours).

Repetition is the only way to put enough of those fragments of memory together to create a truly accurate picture of a book like the bible in your head and compare it to itself in its entirety. That's why eyewitness accounts aren't nearly as useful to the courts as they once were, and will become far less useful as the general population learns just how innacurate their memories actually are. I suspect that a hundred years from now eyewitness accounts will be inadmissable as evidence.

The problem gets worse when introducing substances and age into the equation.

Considering this, do you think it's possible that Camping truly believed himself to be a good christian when he announced the coming end of the world? Maybe noone can even be a christian, because we as humans simply can't process the concept in its entirety without devoting decades of our lives to something that may or may not be real, but has certainly never proved itself, in a world where death and dismemberment are still around every 5th or 6th corner.

Maybe that's the reason it's inconsistant. It's own writers didn't, indeed couldn't, process the entirety at one time in their minds, and never realised the mistakes they were making as they made them. Perhaps never realising the mistakes made. And since very very few people bother to study the bible so thoroughly (and most of those who do are crackpots looking for some kind of secret code), the average theist never sees how the lines are disconnected.

But there are so many Christian denominations and cults, so we should conclude the bible is not clear in any way and open to interpretation. Mr. Camping tried to answer his critics with the bible. What make your interpretation better than his?

I suppose many people make that conclusion instead of reading the Bible for themselves. Should we do the same with all the scientific data out there? Most fossils when tested by two or three different labs will get two or three different age results. Should we just conclude that the process is not clear and throw it all out?

Mr. Camping did not answer his critics with the Bible. He used it and ignored what it actually said in order to further his own purposes.

EXC wrote:

Jesus commanded turn the other check and give to all who ask. Do you do this?

I do my best to do so. I am human, so many times I fail. But that is just more evidence to believe the Gospel and my need for a Savior. If I could follow all the rules, I wouldn't need Him.

EXC wrote:

No, so you're making up your own rules. You follow your own morality and then interpret the bible to fit this. This is what all religious people do.

This is just your personal, and incorrect speculation and generalization.

EXC wrote:

Your god is really your own convenience.

I can say, with just as much confidence, that your lack of god is yours .

Consider this: 70% of your memory is pure imagination. The same goes for everyone on the planet, with the odd ocassional difference up or down since not everyone is exactly the same. But 70% is the average. What happens is that you remember specific scenes, sounds, touches, or smells. The rest is imagined. Your brain automatically filling in the blanks while you are thinking about that particular memory. Oftentimes it does so fairly accurately, but it's still imagination, not actual memory.

Vastet, those are interesting numbers. Where did you get them? Without some sort of reference, I have to assume that this idea is merely speculation on your part.

Vastet wrote:

You would have to read the bible cover to cover a thousand times (a pure guess, it'd probably take a lot more than that) in order to truly memorize it. Repetition is the only way to put enough of those fragments of memory together to create a truly accurate picture of a book like the bible in your head and compare it to itself in its entirety.

Two things here. Are you saying the pages in the Bible only turn one direction? That someone cannot simply flip pages between two sections to compare them?

So someone would have to memorize an entire biology book before they could understand DNA? (Of course that biology book would be out of print the next year because of all the errors it contained.)

Vastet wrote:

And you'll have to be great with Latin, since you can't trust translated copies (fortunately language is stored differently than memory in the brain, so you don't need to worry about the same ratio. Learn Latin fluently, and it's yours).

Your lack of knowledge on this subject is a bit disconcerting. Learning Latin would do no good, since none of the Bible was actually written in it.

Vastet wrote:

That's why eyewitness accounts aren't nearly as useful to the courts as they once were, and will become far less useful as the general population learns just how innacurate their memories actually are. I suspect that a hundred years from now eyewitness accounts will be inadmissable as evidence.

Maybe if we all have optical implants recording everything we see.

Vastet wrote:

The problem gets worse when introducing substances and age into the equation.

That is a common mistake made by those who think themselves "rational". This is a whole other thread topic.

Vastet wrote:

Considering this, do you think it's possible that Camping truly believed himself to be a good christian when he announced the coming end of the world?

Perhaps he did, I do not know what was in his heart, so I can only judge the actions he made.

Vastet wrote:

Maybe noone can even be a christian, because we as humans simply can't process the concept in its entirety without devoting decades of our lives to something that may or may not be real, but has certainly never proved itself, in a world where death and dismemberment are still around every 5th or 6th corner.

It does not take decades, or knowledge of the entire Bible to grasp the concept of Christianity. Here is a simply analogy.

A judge sits in court as people deal with traffic tickets. As each person is shown guilty, or pleads guilty, the judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then one young girl steps up and the judge says, " How do you plead?" The girl responds, "guilty." The judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then something different happens. The judge stands up, takes off his robe, and steps out from behind the bench. He pulls out his wallet and pays the clerk $300. The judge paid her fine because he loved her, as she was his daughter. He couldn't just excuse the fine, because that would not be just. The fine had to be paid. The judge paid it because he knew that she couldn't.

It's a pretty simple concept.

Vastet wrote:

Maybe that's the reason it's inconsistant. It's own writers didn't, indeed couldn't, process the entirety at one time in their minds, and never realised the mistakes they were making as they made them. Perhaps never realising the mistakes made. And since very very few people bother to study the bible so thoroughly (and most of those who do are crackpots looking for some kind of secret code), the average theist never sees how the lines are disconnected.

This is a very interesting statement since it is true and I agree that the writers, spread out over 700 years, could not get it all consistent on their own. The interesting part comes in that the complementary statement is also true.If it is consistent, and they could not have known on their own, then they must have had help from someone who did have an understanding of the entire picture over the 700 plus years.

So please show me some of these "inconsistencies" and "mistakes" that they made so that we can judge for ourselves.

It does not take decades, or knowledge of the entire Bible to grasp the concept of Christianity. Here is a simply analogy.

A judge sits in court as people deal with traffic tickets. As each person is shown guilty, or pleads guilty, the judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then one young girl steps up and the judge says, " How do you plead?" The girl responds, "guilty." The judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then something different happens. The judge stands up, takes off his robe, and steps out from behind the bench. He pulls out his wallet and pays the clerk $300. The judge paid her fine because he loved her, as she was his daughter. He couldn't just excuse the fine, because that would not be just. The fine had to be paid. The judge paid it because he knew that she couldn't.

It's a pretty simple concept.

So to continue the story, all the daughters and sons figure out that they can speed and daddy will pay all the fines. So everyone drives as fast as they can. Without a deterrent, they kill themselves and others leading to tons of misery. They don't worry about the consequences of their actions because they believe daddy will take care of everything.

This human misery caused by speeders continues for many centuries until some people of reason and science decide to apply reason and science to the problem of accidents caused by speeders. Then the problem of speeders can be solved.

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” Seneca

Jesus' death did not bestow any demonstrable benefits on anyone - the 'punishments' he absolved them of, or took onto himself, were only hypothetical, the rules that had been infringed to make them 'sinners' were ones he, as God, imposed, so a simple pardon is all that would have been necessary, logically.

And as EXC points out, it comes awfully close, depending how you interpret it, to allowing everyone open slather, as long as they promise to 'own up' on their death-bed.

And it also makes no particular reference to the only meaningful atonement for actual wrong-doing, which is attempting to make reparations or apologies or consolation to the victims of any 'sins', or their friends and family.

So you believe that we print new text books because the old ones are full of errors?

Are you a YEC? If so, can you set up a one on one discussion with me on young earth?. I would like to hear a coherent account versus the usual cut and paste, block of text that we get from our resident YEC trolls.

I'm not even interested in a debate, perhaps an exchange of ideas where you introduce your ideas, and I throw in my two cents.

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc

So you believe that we print new text books because the old ones are full of errors?

Are you a YEC? If so, can you set up a one on one discussion with me on young earth?. I would like to hear a coherent account versus the usual cut and paste, block of text that we get from our resident YEC trolls.

I'm not even interested in a debate, perhaps an exchange of ideas where you introduce your ideas, and I throw in my two cents.

Ktulu,

I would like that, but I am not sure how to setup a debate. I believe the admins have to do it.

So you believe that we print new text books because the old ones are full of errors?

Are you a YEC? If so, can you set up a one on one discussion with me on young earth?. I would like to hear a coherent account versus the usual cut and paste, block of text that we get from our resident YEC trolls.

I'm not even interested in a debate, perhaps an exchange of ideas where you introduce your ideas, and I throw in my two cents.

Ktulu,

I would like that, but I am not sure how to setup a debate. I believe the admins have to do it.

Joe

I will set up a thread in the atheist vs. theist. Most posters respect the privacy of one on one threads, I don't think we need any special setup.

This makes me cringe, because I attribute much of my scientific and skeptical outlook to the training in science and math I received in gaining my degree in Electrical Engineering. The first half of the course was common with other branches, apart from Civil Engineering (mainly aimed at the construction/building industries) which separated in second year.

This makes me cringe, because I attribute much of my scientific and skeptical outlook to the training in science and math I received in gaining my degree in Electrical Engineering. The first half of the course was common with other branches, apart from Civil Engineering (mainly aimed at the construction/building industries) which separated in second year.

Beats me. Add mathematicians in there as well. And the comment Joe made about getting different lab results for dating - has he never taken a stats or physics course? Error bars? Confidence intervals? Standard deviation?

If radiometric dating gave us rocks that were 1 million years old and also dated as 1 billion years old, I would go along with be very skeptical. But.....

The recent dramatic increase in the precision and accuracy of U-Pb dating has now decreased error by more than an order of magnitude and it is now possible to achieve errors of less than 0.1%. With this advance, radiometric dating has now become a useful tool for asking questions at the outcrop scale where the error of the date can be represented by a few meters of section and sediment accumulation rate can be subdivided at the outcrop scale. This advance will allow for precise radiometric calibration of the duration of magnetostratigraphic subchrons, temporal calibration of terrestrial climate proxies, and precise correlation between terrestrial and marine sections. The Late Cretaceous and early Paleocene strata of the Denver Basin are endowed with a rich paleontological record, a reliable magnetostratigraphy, good exposures of the K-T boundary layer itself, and abundant locally-sourced volcanic ashes. This combination provides a superb test bed for using radiometric dating to answer outcrop scale questions.

Less than 0.1% error is pretty impressive and the paper was presented 10/2009. I'll bet there is more on the subject if I bothered to search around.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.

I suppose many people make that conclusion instead of reading the Bible for themselves. Should we do the same with all the scientific data out there? Most fossils when tested by two or three different labs will get two or three different age results. Should we just conclude that the process is not clear and throw it all out?

Well, no one finds exactly how old something is by carbon testing, or half-life testing. Which is why old bronze age empires and city-states have specific events or lifetimes of persons listed as a range. The same goes for the Chalcolithic and Neolithic. Without cheating, I couldn't say if it's the median or mean that's more important to a group of test results like these.

On the other hand, one can not say the same thing about "reading the bible". The book itself may not be open to interpretation, (well, the NT portion anyhow) but people still focus on their favorite parts anyways. IE, the parts that are the greatest boon to their ego. It seems not really a question of the bible but of simple psychology. But the bible is the "infallible word of God" so there isn't any room for 'pick n' choose' followers... is there?

ps: You don't really expect us to start reading the Bible just because you think it's a great idea?

“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)

What difference does it truly make for someone in engineering or arithmetic to be YEC? None of these fields deal with the age of the Earth directly... (that I'm aware of) Biology and Archaeology, on the other hand, often do conflict with Young Earth.

I think that if there are no conflicts between a person's religious beliefs and a profession is almost inevitable that you will people of said beliefs in that profession. Where's the big fucking surprise here?

“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)

Vastet, those are interesting numbers. Where did you get them? Without some sort of reference, I have to assume that this idea is merely speculation on your part.

I learned those statistics while taking criminal psychology. The specific text book I used is more than 50km away, so I can't reference you to it directly, but these are semi-old studies, and shouldn't take too long for you to find.

joe_2007 wrote:

Two things here. Are you saying the pages in the Bible only turn one direction? That someone cannot simply flip pages between two sections to compare them?

Not at all. But can you look at a thousand pages simultaneously?

joe_2007 wrote:

So someone would have to memorize an entire biology book before they could understand DNA? (Of course that biology book would be out of print the next year because of all the errors it contained.)

Fortunately DNA is much less complex than a religion. 4 chemicals interacting. No biggy. Learn a few equations and it's not hard.

joe_2007 wrote:

Your lack of knowledge on this subject is a bit disconcerting. Learning Latin would do no good, since none of the Bible was actually written in it.

You just shot your credibility in the foot. I'm not even a biblical scholar and I know the bible was assembled from books written in Latin.

joe_2007 wrote:

Maybe if we all have optical implants recording everything we see.

They`d just use the recordings, not the people.

joe_2007 wrote:

That is a common mistake made by those who think themselves "rational". This is a whole other thread topic.

Either you misunderstood my point or you're blatantly wrong. It has been proven time and again that use of certain substances, as well as simple age, can have a measurable negative impact on memory retention.

joe_2007 wrote:

It does not take decades, or knowledge of the entire Bible to grasp the concept of Christianity. Here is a simply analogy.

A judge sits in court as people deal with traffic tickets. As each person is shown guilty, or pleads guilty, the judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then one young girl steps up and the judge says, " How do you plead?" The girl responds, "guilty." The judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then something different happens. The judge stands up, takes off his robe, and steps out from behind the bench. He pulls out his wallet and pays the clerk $300. The judge paid her fine because he loved her, as she was his daughter. He couldn't just excuse the fine, because that would not be just. The fine had to be paid. The judge paid it because he knew that she couldn't.

It's a pretty simple concept.

Pretty disgusting too. Why didn't the judge pay for the other peoples tickets too? I doubt the girl was the only one who couldn't afford it. Why didn't he just set up a payment system that she could afford? How is she going to learn from this when the only consequence was spending a couple minutes at her dads job?

joe_2007 wrote:

This is a very interesting statement since it is true and I agree that the writers, spread out over 700 years, could not get it all consistent on their own. The interesting part comes in that the complementary statement is also true. If it is consistent, and they could not have known on their own, then they must have had help from someone who did have an understanding of the entire picture over the 700 plus years.

So please show me some of these "inconsistencies" and "mistakes" that they made so that we can judge for ourselves.

Thank you,

Joe

Theres a sub forum that specifically deals with all the errors found in the bible: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forums/religionandirrationalities/biblicalerrancyI never bothered reading the whole thing, I found the writing primitive and poor. I literally can't stomach it. But the big one that hit me was the whole incest thing. If all humanity descended from adam and eve, and it's wrong to sleep with family members, then everyone who ever had sex is or is on the way to being in hell. By gods willful and immoral design.

Your lack of knowledge on this subject is a bit disconcerting. Learning Latin would do no good, since none of the Bible was actually written in it.

You just shot your credibility in the foot. I'm not even a biblical scholar and I know the bible was assembled from books written in Latin.

Vastet, the first step to getting yourself out of a hole, stop digging. Do a little research and ask yourself, "How did documents dated at 700 BC get written in Latin, when Latin didn't manifest until 75 BC?" Latin is only a translation of the original manuscripts.

Vastet wrote:

Not at all. But can you look at a thousand pages simultaneously?

Why would I need to look at thousands of pages simultaneously when any given topic may have only five our ten relevant passages? And yes, I can look at all the relevant passages of a topic, or all the occurrences of given word in the original non-Latin language at the same time. Computers are great. But again you try to make it sound like in order to understand concepts in the Bible, that you have to understand, and have memorize, the entire Bible. That is as ridiculous as saying that you have to memorize a biology book to understand that DNA is made up of 4 chemicals.

Vastet wrote:

Either you misunderstood my point or you're blatantly wrong. It has been proven time and again that use of certain substances, as well as simple age, can have a measurable negative impact on memory retention.

Yes, I completely misunderstood your statement. Sorry about that. I did not catch that you meant "substances" that the person would be on.

Vastet wrote:

joe_2007 wrote:

It does not take decades, or knowledge of the entire Bible to grasp the concept of Christianity. Here is a simply analogy.

A judge sits in court as people deal with traffic tickets. As each person is shown guilty, or pleads guilty, the judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then one young girl steps up and the judge says, " How do you plead?" The girl responds, "guilty." The judge says, "$300 fine, pay the clerk." Then something different happens. The judge stands up, takes off his robe, and steps out from behind the bench. He pulls out his wallet and pays the clerk $300. The judge paid her fine because he loved her, as she was his daughter. He couldn't just excuse the fine, because that would not be just. The fine had to be paid. The judge paid it because he knew that she couldn't

It's a pretty simple concept.

Pretty disgusting too. Why didn't the judge pay for the other peoples tickets too? I doubt the girl was the only one who couldn't afford it. Why didn't he just set up a payment system that she could afford? How is she going to learn from this when the only consequence was spending a couple minutes at her dads job?

Sorry, what I did not make clear in the analogy is that the judge is willing and able to pay for everyone, but they have to come and ask him to before getting to court. Once in court, he is the judge, not 'dad'. Oh there are other consequences for the girl, just not the big 'fine' in the court. As for a payment plan... if we move the analogy back to God, the 'fine' is death. There is not really a payment plan for that.

EXC wrote:

So to continue the story, all the daughters and sons figure out that they can speed and daddy will pay all the fines. So everyone drives as fast as they can. Without a deterrent, they kill themselves and others leading to tons of misery. They don't worry about the consequences of their actions because they believe daddy will take care of everything.

This human misery caused by speeders continues for many centuries until some people of reason and science decide to apply reason and science to the problem of accidents caused by speeders. Then the problem of speeders can be solved.

EXC, and kind of to Bob too,

What you fail to see is that even if that were true, the disbelief of the scientists and even the remedy they come up with for speeders, does not in any way negate the judge or his love for them or his payment for the fine. What you also forget, is that as an analogy for Christianity, the sons and daughters have to ask for daddy to pay ahead of time. They need to go to him and say, "I've sped and I need you to pay for me, and I will be a better, safer driver from now on." If they get to court and he sees in their record that they lied and actually drove faster and more recklessly after their talk, then he isn't going to pay the fine. Sure, he knows they all screw up and get tickets once in a while. As long as they have tried to be better drivers, then he pays. I was going to quote a Bible verse that addresses your do-what-you-want scenario exactly, but I assume you would just ignore it.

I see I really need to do better at putting entire analogies together to start with, because you guys a certainly not going to fill in the gaps.

Vastet wrote:

Theres a sub forum that specifically deals with all the errors found in the bible: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forums/religionandirrationalities/biblicalerrancyI never bothered reading the whole thing, I found the writing primitive and poor. I literally can't stomach it. But the big one that hit me was the whole incest thing. If all humanity descended from adam and eve, and it's wrong to sleep with family members, then everyone who ever had sex is or is on the way to being in hell. By gods willful and immoral design.

That's the thing, Vastet. People make so many assumptions about what the Bible says, instead of reading what's there. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Adam and Eve are the only two people that God made in that fashion. In Genesis 4:17 it says, "Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. " That is the first time it speaks of a wife for Cain. In any other book, if it said the same thing, without discussing where the wife came from, no one would jump to the conclusion that it was his sister. Adam and Eve were the first, it never says only.

Most of the 'inconsistencies' and 'contradictions' that people throw out there, if they even know of any themselves, are just contradictions in their interpretation, not in what the Bible actually has written.

Vastet, the first step to getting yourself out of a hole, stop digging. Do a little research and ask yourself, "How did documents dated at 700 BC get written in Latin, when Latin didn't manifest until 75 BC?" Latin is only a translation of the original manuscripts.

The bible today is not the bible from 700 bce, sorry to disappoint. > >

It's irrelevant anyway. The point was that you'd have to master ancient dead languages. Quite dodging and address the actual issue.

joe_2007 wrote:

Why would I need to look at thousands of pages simultaneously when any given topic may have only five our ten relevant passages? And yes, I can look at all the relevant passages of a topic, or all the occurrences of given word in the original non-Latin language at the same time. Computers are great. But again you try to make it sound like in order to understand concepts in the Bible, that you have to understand, and have memorize, the entire Bible. That is as ridiculous as saying that you have to memorize a biology book to understand that DNA is made up of 4 chemicals

You're so wrong it's funny. In order to understand the RELIGION, you know, the topic we're discussing?, you have to know the WHOLE RELIGION. You can't read 3 or 4 passages and pretend to know the whole thing. Lmfao.

joe_2007 wrote:

Sorry, what I did not make clear in the analogy is that the judge is willing and able to pay for everyone, but they have to come and ask him to before getting to court. Once in court, he is the judge, not 'dad'. Oh there are other consequences for the girl, just not the big 'fine' in the court. As for a payment plan... if we move the analogy back to God, the 'fine' is death. There is not really a payment plan for that.

First, death isn't a fine, it's an inevitability. Everything dies. Atoms die. Planets die. Stars die. Hell, you've died a million times already. Every 7 years the oldest cells in your body have been replaced. Even more often than that you learn something that changes the way you think and act. The person who you were 10 years ago is dead and gone. All that remains from that time is some fragmented memories strung together by imagination.

Long story short, death's not a punishment. It's the way of existence.

But it's worse than that. By definition, punishment is meant to modify behaviour. But there's no way to modify your behaviour if you're dead.

So on all counts, it doesn't fly.

Second, unless "dad" tells everyone about that option, it's not an option for everyone. It's favouritism.

joe_2007 wrote:

That's the thing, Vastet. People make so many assumptions about what the Bible says, instead of reading what's there. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Adam and Eve are the only two people that God made in that fashion. In Genesis 4:17 it says, "Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. " That is the first time it speaks of a wife for Cain. In any other book, if it said the same thing, without discussing where the wife came from, no one would jump to the conclusion that it was his sister. Adam and Eve were the first, it never says only.

It never says they weren't the only either. Therefore it's open to interpretation. Therefore it's fundamentally flawed. You can't fight your way out of this one.

joe_2007 wrote:

Most of the 'inconsistencies' and 'contradictions' that people throw out there, if they even know of any themselves, are just contradictions in their interpretation, not in what the Bible actually has written.

Thank you,

Joe

The fact that the bible can be interpreted at all completely destroys its credibility, because it claims itself to be perfect.

"How did documents dated at 700 BC get written in Latin, when Latin didn't manifest until 75 BC?" Latin is only a translation of the original manuscripts.

Joe, there are no books of the Bible that exist that are "dated to 700 BCE". The oldest actual physical copies are the Dead Sea Scrolls aka the DSS. The DSS dates to the 2nd century BCE circa 160 BCE to 70 CE. These books are written in Aramaic, Hebrew and a few in Greek.

joe_2007 wrote:

Why would I need to look at thousands of pages simultaneously when any given topic may have only five our ten relevant passages? And yes, I can look at all the relevant passages of a topic, or all the occurrences of given word in the original non-Latin language at the same time. Computers are great. But again you try to make it sound like in order to understand concepts in the Bible, that you have to understand, and have memorize, the entire Bible. That is as ridiculous as saying that you have to memorize a biology book to understand that DNA is made up of 4 chemicals.

You need to peruse all of the OT and understand Judaism before you jump into the derived religion of Pauline influence commonly called Christianity. Everything in the Hebrew Bible pertains to the original religion of the Jews as developed over time which coalesced in the mid 2nd century BCE. Jumping into Christianity without grasping the original basis of the beliefs is no better than becoming a Muslim with no knowledge of the Jews. Commonly, and I'm not saying you do this because I haven't seen your take on the Jews, Christians simply claim the Jews misunderstood what Jesus represented and rejected him. The reasons for said rejection are usually poorly given such as "proud, rebellious, evil, sinful people" or other derogatory insults towards the Jews.

Vastet is pointing out to you that the entire beliefs expressed in the Bible, the Hebrew first and then the NT must be considered in whole. When one does puzzle piece fitting as must be done when one goes from the original Jewish beliefs to Christianity one sees that major portions and beliefs of the original religion are discarded in favor of a single interpretation derived from primariliy Pauline sources possibly even from a single individual.

There are many aspects that enable an engineer to design that must be understood. One does not simply peruse a text on AC and DC circuits and then design a cpu. Many important basic building blocks go into the understanding of an engineer to enable him to grasp the area sufficiently to do his job. Based on the number of ECOs (engineering change orders) most products have often things are overlooked. This is true for all subjects not just engineering, a profession I too practice but in another area (electrical design engineering). In the same respect, biblical understanding is too often a game of puzzle piece fitting by the believer in question. One needs to take all of it in account especially the original beliefs of the initiators, the Jews. I do not as I said know your take on Judaism and shall not presuppose to you any certain belief until you express one. You are welcome to document for us your take on it.

joe_2007 wrote:

That's the thing, Vastet. People make so many assumptions about what the Bible says, instead of reading what's there. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Adam and Eve are the only two people that God made in that fashion. In Genesis 4:17 it says, "Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. " That is the first time it speaks of a wife for Cain. In any other book, if it said the same thing, without discussing where the wife came from, no one would jump to the conclusion that it was his sister. Adam and Eve were the first, it never says only.

Most of the 'inconsistencies' and 'contradictions' that people throw out there, if they even know of any themselves, are just contradictions in their interpretation, not in what the Bible actually has written.

Thank you,

Joe

And here I'm going to wonder if you take the same path as well? Time will tell from your posts and responses.

I do not know what translation you utilize of the Hebrew Bible (OT) but it does not appear to be the JPS. In that prior to the event you quote, the god marked Cain so others would not kill him is clearly indicative of other beings called man upon the planet. That the Hebrew derived mythology has similarities to other ancient mythologies is clear. That the others such as Sumerian are far older than the Hebrew myths has been proved and with actual documents (clay tablets) that date far before the events portrayed in the Genesis story telling legends. As mentioned above, the oldest known copies of any part of the Hebrew Bible are the DSS which are at best from about 160 BCE in contrast to Sumerian from the 4th millennium. Perhaps you have some other evidence to provide for an early dating of the Hebrew stories, if so please indicate what.

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.

I was not sure where else to post this. News sounded like a good place.

The RRS home page has this statement following a large post on Harold Camping:

"I certainly would like a Christian to explain this to me, without just some hand-waving and trying to dismiss Camping as a fringe crackpot: How is it that your apparently lovely, morally pure religion is such a vector for this sort of disease? How is it that people like Mr. Camping, and organizations like Family Radio, can become multi-million dollar entities by having a Bible ride shotgun with their disgusting messages? Do you not see this as a fundamental problem with vague superstitions? "

So you would like Christians to, instead of denounce Camping as the crick-pot he is, to accept blame for his delusions.You would like me hold him up as a good Christian leader so that you can blame the Bible and God for the actions of a delusional man who ignored what the Bible has to say.Camping ignored what the Bible taught in order to gain himself money and glory.He no more had the Bible “riding shotgun” than I would have the “Origin of Species” riding shotgun if I started a company to use words and phrases from it to show that Darwin truly believed in God. Yes I do see that vague superstitions have fundamental problems, that's why I don't agree with science's rendition of how we all got here. I would love to setup a one-one debate with you to discuss all of this further. I think we could have a fun, cordial, intelligent debate about many things discussed on this site. I look forward to it.

Thank you,

Joe

If no one sold him an invisible friend claim, he wouldn't have been able to peddle his superstition. Belief in invisible friends starts as a result of a parent, or society introducing them to the claim. I

AND, fyi, you calling him a crackpot to us is like a Star Wars fan arguing with a Star Trec fan at a si fi convention. You do understand that both you and he buy the claim of an invisible magical super brain?

Arguing over the details of how this fictional super hero is arranged misses the point that it takes a belief in an invisible magical super brain, even before one gets to details and labels.

We are very realistic in that people will always believe things we find absurd. BUT we wish the moderates in theism would demand that these nutcases not peddle this crap. It is hard enough dealing with "magic man Lite" people.

You could call your god Allah, or Vishnu, or Thor, humanity does not need nuts selling "end times", or slamming planes into buildings, or shooting abortion doctors. We know that YOU can live without an invisible friend belief, and even if you never change your mind, could you AT LEAST, take to task the nuts in your own bunch?

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

According to mainstream Christianity, Mr. Camping is a crackpost only because he interprets a few bible verses differently than they do.

I agree with that - how is believing people will be Raptured on May 21st really that much more insane than believing that the world was created by magic 6,000 years ago, and that all the species of animals came from Noah's Ark?

I guess the difference is that, since the flood and all that stuff "supposedly" happened in the past and there's no way to "disprove it" with personal observation - sure I know that the facts of evolution do disprove it, but it's a easy for a Christian to say "Well evolutionists are just distorting the facts about what really happened because they hate God" and there's no way to falsify that. If a Christian said that judgment day is coming tomorrow and it doesn't happen, there's no real way to spin that one.

This is why I know that 99% of fundie Christians know subconsiously how ridiculous their beliefs are - they don't have a problem spouting idiotic beliefs as long as there's no way to falsify them (ex. "The Rapture will happen someday" instead of "The Rapture will happen on a given date". They know deep down that their beliefs are a lie, but they never give an argument for their beliefs that can be falsified, so every time the Rapture doesn't happen, they can't be proven wrong. They can just keep saying "It will happen eventually".

Optimism is reality, pessimism is the fantasy that you know enough to be cynical

According to mainstream Christianity, Mr. Camping is a crackpost only because he interprets a few bible verses differently than they do.

I agree with that - how is believing people will be Raptured on May 21st really that much more insane than believing that the world was created by magic 6,000 years ago, and that all the species of animals came from Noah's Ark?

I guess the difference is that, since the flood and all that stuff "supposedly" happened in the past and there's no way to "disprove it" with personal observation - sure I know that the facts of evolution do disprove it, but it's a easy for a Christian to say "Well evolutionists are just distorting the facts about what really happened because they hate God" and there's no way to falsify that. If a Christian said that judgment day is coming tomorrow and it doesn't happen, there's no real way to spin that one.

This is why I know that 99% of fundie Christians know subconsiously how ridiculous their beliefs are - they don't have a problem spouting idiotic beliefs as long as there's no way to falsify them (ex. "The Rapture will happen someday" instead of "The Rapture will happen on a given date". They know deep down that their beliefs are a lie, but they never give an argument for their beliefs that can be falsified, so every time the Rapture doesn't happen, they can't be proven wrong. They can just keep saying "It will happen eventually".

This is where I think the battle over reality can be won. Lots of people, spend time trying to de construct the Yellow Brick road. Although important, you still need the brass knuckle (metaphorically of course) approach of pointing out their own absurdity when they point out other's absurdities.

If someone said "That Big Foot claim is absurd and bullshit", but they themselves claim invisible pink unicorns, simply remind them what they believe and remind them they have as much evidence for their claim as the ones they themselves scoff at.

In this case, BOTH this nutcase selling the end of the world, and people who don't buy it, but still believe in magic babies with no second set of DNA, simply remind them that they have the same super hero.

Again, if a Christian wants to say, "Yea this guy is nuts", I agree, but why would it be any more rational to claim magic babies?

When this infighting amongst a label starts, to me it is like a Star Trec fan arguing with a Star Wars fan. Or it is like two Dungeons and Dragons fans arguing over the rules and role of the dice.

I love it when a believer (of any religion) tries to pull "I am not like the others". No one is saying you are like the others. But you are the same in the amount of evidence you have for your fictional pet deity claim.

You can wrap an empty box in countless pretty wrapping of all different colors and patterns with all sorts of different ribbons and bows, but the box is still empty.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37